Principal Conductor Edward Gardner supported by Aud Jebsen
Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis
Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KG
Director Elena Dubinets Chief Executive David Burke
Pieter Schoeman supported by Neil Westreich
A place to call home
Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (15’)
Tom Coult
Pleasure Garden: concerto for violin & orchestra (London premiere) (27’)
Interval (20’)
Vaughan Williams
The Lark Ascending: romance for violin & orchestra (13’)
Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 9 in E minor (33’)
Andrew Manze conductor
Daniel Pioro violin
stage
Philharmonic
Schoeman
Manze
Pioro
you
We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you need any information or help, please ask a member of staff.
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We look forward to seeing you again soon.
A few points to note for your comfort and enjoyment:
Photography is not allowed in the auditorium.
Latecomers will only be admitted to the auditorium if there is a suitable break in the performance.
Recording is not permitted in the auditorium without the prior consent of the Southbank Centre. The Southbank Centre reserves the right to confiscate video or sound equipment and hold it in safekeeping until the performance has ended.
Mobiles and watches should be switched off before the performance begins.
We’re delighted to welcome our new cohorts of talented musicians who will be spending this season with the LPO as participants in our Rising Talent programmes. It’s great to welcome them to the LPO family! To find out more about our programmes, visit lpo.org.uk/education
LPO Junior Artists is our orchestral experience programme for talented young musicians from backgrounds currently under-represented in professional UK orchestras. It is open to exceptional players of orchestral instruments aged 15–19 and minimum Grade 8 standard. Junior Artists become part of the LPO family for a year, getting to know our musicians, staff and artists, as well as members of other Rising Talent schemes and former LPO Junior Artists. We’re delighted to be working with the following musicians in 2022/23: Teagan Craggs, Dahlia Radji, Shaina Vadher, Daniel Pengelly, Charlie Golder, Rhea Jo, Alex Rowsell Ryan & Haniya Glazebrook.
Our annual Foyle Future Firsts programme bridges the transition between education and the professional platform for outstanding orchestral musicians at the start of their careers. It’s designed to nurture and develop talented orchestral players, forming the base for future appointments to the London Philharmonic Orchestra and other world-class orchestras and ensembles. This year we welcome Vera Beumer, Caroline Heard, Lukas Bowen, Tabitha Selley, Thea Sayer, Christopher Vettraino, Méline Le Calvez, Bruce Parris, Millie Lihoreau, Emily Ashby, Gemma Riley, Alexander Miller, Iain Clarke, Nicolette Chin & Elliott Gaston-Ross.
The LPO Young Composers programme aims to find and support the progression of talented orchestral composers. Working under the mentorship of our Composer-in-Residence, Brett Dean, they will spend the season with the LPO, each creating a new work for chamber orchestra to be performed by Foyle Future First musicians and LPO players at our Debut Sounds showcase concert next summer. Welcome to our 2022/23 Young Composers Jakob Bragg, Philip Dutton, Zakiya Leeming, Matt London & Tayla-Leigh Payne.
Pieter Schoeman* Leader Chair supported by Neil Westreich
Alice Ivy-Pemberton Kate Oswin
Lasma Taimina Chair supported by Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave Catherine Craig Thomas Eisner
Katalin Varnagy Chair supported by Sonja Drexler Fanny Fheodoroff Nilufar Alimaksumova Sophie Phillips Chu-Yu Yang Ronald Long
Thea Spiers Gavin Davies Amanda Smith† Ricky Gore†
Tania Mazzetti Principal Chair supported by Countess Dominique Loredan Emma Oldfield Co-Principal Ashley Stevens Nancy Elan Joseph Maher Kate Birchall
Fiona Higham Chair supported by David & Yi Buckley Claudia TarrantMatthews† Sioni Williams Harry Kerr Alison Strange Charlie MacClure† Matthew Bain Anna Croad
Richard Waters Principal Chair supported by Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp Toby Warr
Martin Wray Katharine Leek Benedetto Pollani† Stanislav Popov†
Lucia Ortiz Sauco Daniel Cornford Charles Cross Jill Valentine Henri Hill Cellos
Pei-Jee Ng Principal Chair supported by The Candide Trust
Richard Birchall† Sue Sutherley Susanna Riddell Helen Thomas† Sibylle Hentschel Leo Melvin Tamaki Sugimoto Hee Yeon Cho Louise Dearsley
Sebastian Pennar Principal Hugh Kluger George Peniston Laura Murphy† Adam Wynter David Johnson Nickie Dixon Gabriel Rodrigues Flutes
Charlotte Ashton Guest Principal Camilla Marchant Katherine Bicknell
Katherine Bicknell
Ian Hardwick* Principal Alice Munday
Sue Böhling* Principal Chair supported by Dr Barry Grimaldi Alice Munday
Benjamin Mellefont
Principal
Thomas Watmough Chair supported by Roger Greenwood
Paul Richards* Principal
Martin Robertson Tim Holmes
Tenor Saxophone
Shaun Thompson Bassoons
Jonathan Davies Principal Chair supported by Sir Simon Robey Guylaine Eckersley Contrabassoon Simon Estell* Principal
Annemarie Federle Guest Principal Martin Hobbs Oliver Johnson Gareth Mollison Jonathan Farey
Paul Beniston* Principal Holly Clark Guest Principal Anne McAneney*
Paul Beniston* Trombones
David Whitehouse Principal Duncan Wilson
Lyndon Meredith Principal
Lee Tsarmaklis* Principal Chair supported by Friends of the Orchestra
Marney O’Sullivan Guest Principal
Andrew Barclay* Principal Chair supported by Garf & Gill Collins
Feargus Brennan Keith Millar Karen Hutt
Rachel Masters Principal Gabriella Jones
Piano/Celeste Catherine Edwards
* Holds a professorial appointment in London
† Chamber orchestra for Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
The LPO also acknowledges the following chair supporters whose players are not present at this concert:
William & Alex de Winton Victoria Robey OBE Bianca & Stuart Roden Eric Tomsett
Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. With every performance we aim to bring wonder to the modern world and cement our position as a leading orchestra for the 21st century.
Our home is here at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour throughout the UK and internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. Each summer we’re resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, combining the magic of opera with Glyndebourne’s glorious setting in the Sussex countryside.
We’re always at the forefront of technology, finding new ways to share our music globally. You’ll find us online, on streaming platforms, on social media and through our broadcast partnership with Marquee TV. During the pandemic period we launched ‘LPOnline’: over 100 videos of performances, insights and introductions to playlists, which led to us being named runner-up in the Digital Classical Music Awards 2020. During 2022/23 we’ll be working once again with Marquee TV to broadcast selected live concerts, so you can share or relive the wonder from your own living room.
Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In 2021 Edward Gardner became our 13th Principal Conductor, taking the Orchestra into its tenth decade. Vladimir Jurowski became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his impact as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor and Brett Dean our Composer-in-Residence.
Everyone will have heard the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whether it’s playing the world’s National Anthems at every medal ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, our iconic recording with Pavarotti that made Nessun Dorma a global football anthem, or closing the flotilla at The Queen’s Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. And you’ll almost certainly have heard us on the soundtracks for major films including The Lord of the Rings
We also release live, studio and archive recordings on our own label, and are the world’s most-streamed orchestra, with over 15 million plays of our content each month. Recent releases include music by Richard Strauss under Klaus Tennstedt with legendary soprano Jessye Norman; the first volume of a Stravinsky series with Vladimir Jurowski including The Rite of Spring
The Midsummer Marriage under Edward Gardner, captured in his first concert as LPO Principal Conductor in September 2021 (see page 14).
We’re committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians and music-lovers: there’s nothing we love more than seeing the joy of children and families enjoying their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about equipping schools and teachers through schools’ concerts, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Today’s young instrumentalists are the orchestral members of the future, so we’re committed to offering them opportunities to progress. Our LPO Junior Artists programme is leading the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers.
We believe in the relevance of our music, and that our programmes must reflect the narratives of modern times. This season we’re exploring themes of belonging and displacement in our series ‘A place to call home’, delving into music by composers including Austrians Erich Korngold and Paul Hindemith, Hungarian Béla Bartók, Cuban Tania León, Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá and Syrian Kinan Azmeh. As we celebrate our 90th anniversary we perform works premiered by the Orchestra during its illustrious history. This season also marks Vaughan Williams’s 150th anniversary and we’ll be celebrating with four of his works, as well as both symphonies by Elgar and music by Tippett and Thomas Adès. Our commitment to everything new and creative includes premieres by Brett Dean, Mark Simpson and Heiner Goebbels, as well as new commissions from composers from around the world including Agata Zubel, Elena Langer and Vijay Iyer.
Pieter Schoeman was appointed Leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, having previously been Co-Leader since 2002. He is also a Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance.
Pieter has performed worldwide as a soloist and recitalist in such famous halls as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Moscow’s Rachmaninov Hall, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and London’s Royal Festival Hall. As a chamber musician he regularly appears at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. His chamber music partners have included Anne-Sophie Mutter, Veronika Eberle, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Boris Garlitsky, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Martin Helmchen and Julia Fischer.
Pieter has performed numerous times as a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Highlights have included an appearance as both conductor and soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, the Brahms Double Concerto with Kristina Blaumane, and the Britten Double Concerto with Alexander Zemtsov, which was recorded and released on the LPO Label to great critical acclaim.
Pieter has appeared as Guest Leader with the BBC, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon and Baltimore symphony orchestras; the Rotterdam and BBC Philharmonic orchestras; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Pieter’s chair in the LPO is generously supported by Neil Westreich.
Andrew Manze is widely celebrated as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation. His extensive and scholarly knowledge of the repertoire, together with his boundless energy and warmth, mark him out. He has been Chief Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Hannover, since 2014, and his contract has recently been extended until summer 2023. Since 2018 he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Following highly successful tours to China in 2016 and 2019, the 2022/23 season sees the NDR Radiophilharmonie return to Japan for a busy touring schedule. Andrew Manze and the orchestra have embarked on a major series of award-winning recordings for Pentatone, focused on the works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. The first recording in the Mendelssohn series won the German Record Critics’ Award. Andrew has also recorded a cycle of the complete Vaughan Williams symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for Onyx Classics to critical acclaim.
Andrew Manze’s most recent engagement with the LPO was in December 2019, when he conducted a programme of Elgar, Ireland and Walton with piano soloist Piers Lane. In great demand as a guest conductor across the globe, he also enjoys longstanding relationships with orchestras including the Munich Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Salzburg. He is also a regular guest at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City. In the 2022/23 season he makes his operatic debut with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, conducting
performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas alongside Schoenberg’s Erwartung, in collaboration with Artistic Director Serge Dorny. Other highlights this season include engagements with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and conducting performances with the WDR Symphony as part of the Klavierfest Ruhr.
From 2006–14 Andrew Manze was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. During this time he made a number of recordings with them including Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony (Harmonia Mundi) and a cycle of Brahms symphonies (CPO). He was also Principal Guest Conductor of the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2008–11, and held the title of Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for four seasons.
After reading Classics at the University of Cambridge, Andrew Manze studied the violin and rapidly became a leading specialist in the world of historical performance practice. He became Associate Director of the Academy of Ancient Music in 1996, and then Artistic Director of the English Concert from 2003–07. As a violinist he released an astonishing variety of recordings, many of them award-winning.
Andrew Manze is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, Visiting Professor at the Oslo Academy, and has contributed to new editions of sonatas and concerti by Bach and Mozart, published by Bärenreiter and Breitkopf & Härtel. He also teaches, writes about and edits music, as well as broadcasting regularly on radio and television. In 2011 he received the prestigious ‘Rolf Schock Prize’ in Stockholm.
Daniel Pioro is a soloist, collaborative artist and advocate for new and experimental music. He actively promotes new music and is interested in finding new ways of listening to and creating sound, as well as developing strong collaborations with composers, artists, choreographers, dancers and writers. Since making his BBC Proms debut in 2019, where his performance was described as ‘the most inventive and engaging’ by The Telegraph, Daniel continues to grow his international career.
Throughout the 2022/23 season, Daniel is Artist-inResidence here at the Southbank Centre, beginning with this evening’s LPO concert. He returns in January to perform an all-day cycle of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas with organist James McVinnie, and in March gives an electroacoustic performance with Icelandic producer/ performer Valgeir Sigurðsson and viol player Liam Byrne, also featuring Pioro’s group, Studio Collective. He concludes the residency in May with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, featuring new poetry written and read by Michael Morpurgo and followed by Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum with the London Sinfonietta.
Also this season, Daniel performs the Brahms Double Concerto with cellist Anastasia Kobekina on tour in the UK, continuing his relationship with the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Elena Schwarz. In January 2023 he releases his first album on the Platoon label, Saint Boy, a collection of ancient and contemporary, sacred and secular music for solo violin, chamber organ and string quartet.
Highlights of previous seasons include the Knussen and Bruch Violin Concertos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; Thomas Adès’s Violin Concerto Concentric Paths and Colin Matthews’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic; and a newly commissioned concerto, Parallax by Joseph Davies, as well as Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Daniel returned last year to the Norfolk and Norwich Festival performing Biber’s complete Rosary Sonatas, and made his debut at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg performing music from his album Dust, as well as other works by his close collaborator, Valgeir Sigurðsson.
During previous seasons, Daniel and his regular duo partner Katherine Tinker performed numerous new works for violin and piano and new adaptations for violin and chamber organ for their debut at Snape Maltings Festival and a return to the Wigmore Hall; the duo’s incredibly creative programmes included new compositions by Cassandra Miller, Nico Muhly, Linda Catlin Smith, Nick Martin and Laurence Crane, intertwined with well-known works by J S Bach and Biber. Orchestral projects included a live broadcast for BBC Radio 3 with the BBC Philharmonic and Ryan McAdams, performing a selection of works by Hildegard of Bingen, Tartini, Biber and Rameau, arranged in collaboration with composer Tom Coult.
In April 2021 Daniel joined the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in the new role of Associate Artist in Contemporary String Performance and launched a new contemporary music group called Studio Collective, designed to challenge students’ approach to choosing repertoire, engaging with the score, and their own musical decisions.
Daniel’s celebrated association with the composer and guitarist Jonny Greenwood led Greenwood to write and dedicate a new violin concerto, Horror vacui, for him. Daniel premiered the piece to much acclaim at the BBC Proms in 2019 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Hugh Brunt, a performance praised by the BBC as ‘the ultimate display of musical virtuosity’. In 2019, Daniel’s recording of Bach’s Partita No. 2 was the first release on Greenwood’s label, Octatonic Records.
Tonight is the first of three LPO concerts this autumn celebrating the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose 150th anniversary we mark this year. The LPO was privileged to work with ‘RVW’ on many occasions, premiering several of his works and building a relationship with the music of this most individual and beloved of British composers that flourishes to this day. Tonight we hear two of his most well-known works: the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending, followed by the astonishing Ninth Symphony: music of visionary power by an 86-year-old master.
Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is so well loved today that it’s hard to imagine a time when it could have been found ‘difficult’. But the first performance, in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910, seems to have baffled most of its audience, and the reception was muted. The causes aren’t hard to find. Vaughan Williams may not have been the first British composer to draw inspiration from the
music of Elizabethan England, but what he found in his chosen theme – Thomas Tallis’s Psalm-tune, ‘Why fumeth in fight’ – is more than quaint olde-worlde colouring. Tallis’s tune follows the old ‘Phrygian mode’ (try imagining a scale of E on a keyboard using only the white notes), and there are strikingly abrupt major-minor contrasts – things that would have sounded ‘new’, or at least odd, to traditionally schooled listeners in 1910. Then there’s the division of the string orchestra into contrasting ‘choirs’: a string quartet, an ensemble of ten stringed instruments, and a larger string ensemble – like the use of separately placed groups of singers in Tallis’s great motet Spem in Alium Composers in Edwardian England just didn’t do things like that.
At the same time, there is something about the Tallis Fantasia that marks it out as modern. Tallis’s theme isn’t presented right away in its original form. First we hear five hushed chords for full strings, luminous at first, but fading into minor-key shadows. There is a striking echo here of Vaughan Williams’s cantata Toward the Unknown Region, a work about the soul’s final journey in death. Tallis’s theme then emerges slowly, in skeletal fragments, as though from the darkness. As the Fantasia builds to its magnificent climax there is a growing sense of impassioned searching, as though the music were striving to recapture the original fleeting vision. The end does bring a kind of resolution, but the serene opening chord never quite returns in its original form. The primal purity of faith is glimpsed as a possibility, but never quite recaptured. A friend once half-jokingly described Vaughan Williams as ‘The Christian Agnostic’. Both sides of that paradox find expression in his music, but never with greater power and subtlety than in the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Programme note © Stephen Johnson
1 Starting to rain – Zennyo Ryūō appears
2 Dyeing the lake blue for Queen Victoria
3 Francesco Landini serenades the birds
4 The art of setting stones
Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and Salford University in association with the Royal Horticultural Society. World premiere: 6 November 2021, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester: Daniel Pioro (violin), BBC Philharmonic, Elena Schwarz (conductor)
A composer profile is on the next page.
The four movements of Pleasure Garden take inspiration from various images and stories about constructed ‘natural spaces’ in and around cities. These images and stories sparked off initial musical ideas, but composition then proceeded along its own musical logic rather than each movement necessarily ‘telling a story’.
In the 9th century, there was a rain-making contest at the ‘Sacred Spring Garden’ of Kyoto’s Imperial Palace. The priests Kūkai and Shubin were ordered to make rain appear – Kūkai won the contest by summoning the Dragon Queen Zennyo Ryūō, who brought storms and torrential rain. In this movement there is often the sense of light drops of rain giving way to a deluge as the enormous monster appears.
Worsley New Hall, the Gothic mansion whose grounds are now home to the new RHS Bridgewater in Salford, was visited by Queen Victoria in 1851. She and her party arrived by boat on the Bridgewater Canal, which had been dyed blue to mark her visit. As it contained iron ore from nearby mines, the water was already
stained orange, so the resultant colour was more of a green. I can picture the dye slowly soaking in, beginning to mingle with the water.
Francesco Landini was a 14th-century Italian musician, whose organetto playing was extremely beautiful.
He was asked, when with friends at Florence’s Paradiso gardens, to settle a bet. When he played his organetto, would the garden’s many birds sing more, or less?
He played his beautiful song – at first the birds became silent, but as he played on, they fluttered down and sung more and more, becoming cacophonous.
Eventually they subsided and one bird flew down and perched on his head.
Japanese rock gardens are constructed around artful arrangements of rocks, and raked gravel or sand to evoke water. There are rules, sometimes strict, for the placement of rocks – often these are to encourage an overall sense of harmony, without ever arranging things symmetrically. These rules use the principles of ishi wo tateru koto (‘the art of setting stones’).
Programme note © Tom Coult
An announcement will be made five minutes before the end of the interval.
Tom Coult was born in London in 1988. His playful and seductive music has been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles, and in 2021 he became Composer-in-Association with the BBC Philharmonic.
His first chamber opera Violet, with a text by Alice Birch, premiered in 2022 at the Aldeburgh Festival and subsequently toured. It was described by The Telegraph as ‘the best new British opera in years’. It is already being staged in second and third productions in Ulm (Germany) and Paris in 2022 and 2023.
Tom’s large-scale pieces have included Beautiful Caged Thing for soprano Claire Booth and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and St John’s Dance (premiered by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra to open the First Night of the 2017 BBC Proms). He has enjoyed further associations with Britten Sinfonia and London Sinfonietta (who premiered Spirit of the Staircase, nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award), and in 2022 was Composer-in-Residence at Switzerland’s Musikdorf Ernen Festival. His music has been described as ‘funny and surreal and delicately poetic, all at once’ (The Telegraph), and ‘full of bewitching sounds … fresh and precisely imagined’ (The Guardian) – ‘Coult is a composer who spins glittering, teasingly ambiguous patterns out of simpleseeming material … a very individual voice’ (The Telegraph).
Tom studied at the University of Manchester with Camden Reeves and Philip Grange, and at King’s College London with George Benjamin. From 2017–19 he was Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge, and he has taught with Britten Sinfonia Academy and Aldeburgh Young Musicians. Awards include a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize.
AGATA Z UBEL Piano Concerto No. 2 plus Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 4 & Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Edward Gardner conductor | Tomoko Mukaiyama piano
DAVID BRUCE The Peacock Pavane plus music by Copland, Rodrigo, de Falla & Gabriela Ortiz Karen Kamensek conductor | Miloš Karadaglić guitar
VI CTORIA VITA POLEVÁ Nova ELENA LANGER The Dong with a Luminous Nose plus Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 Andrey Boreyko conductor | Kristina Blaumane cello | London Philharmonic Choir
BRETT DEAN In spe contra spem* plus Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Edward Gardner conductor | Emma Bell soprano | Elsa Dreisig soprano
Vaughan Williams’s much-loved pastoral ‘romance for violin and orchestra’ (consisting of woodwind, horns, triangle and strings) was composed just before the First World War, and revised in 1920. The first performance was in London in June 1921: Adrian Boult conducted, and the soloist was the work’s dedicatee Marie Hall, who as a girl had been taught the violin by Elgar.
The Lark Ascending has roughly the shape of an arch, beginning and ending slowly but with a slightly more animated middle section, and at the centre of that a brief quick episode (though the marking is still Allegro tranquillo). Its musical language is soaked in English folksong, though without direct quotations. But its unique character stems from the cadenzas for the soloist that frame and punctuate this outline, and the solo arabesques that decorate so much of the piece.
As the composer’s widow Ursula memorably wrote, Vaughan Williams ‘made the violin become both the bird’s song and its flight, being, rather than illustrating, the poem from which the title was taken’. Lines from that poem, by George Meredith (1828–1909), are printed at the head of the score:
He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake
* * * * * *
‘For singing till his heaven fills, ‘Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes.
* * * * * *
Till lost on his aërial wings In light, and then the fancy sings.
Programme note © Anthony Burton
When Vaughan Williams began his Ninth Symphony at the beginning of 1956, he had but two and half years to live. Well into his eighties, he was, by any generation’s standard, an old man. The composer’s creativity, however, showed little or no sign of waning, with the Four Last Songs and his various responses to the poetry of William Blake still to emerge. Yet the Ninth Symphony was surely the most noticeable evidence of continued inspiration.
It was a work, in turn, inspired by Thomas Hardy, whose 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge had recently been adapted for the radio, with a score by Vaughan Williams. In the Ninth Symphony, however, the stimulus came from Hardy’s 1891 Tess of the d’Urbervilles The first movement, for instance, was originally entitled ‘Wessex Prelude’, introducing the semi-fictional landscape of Hardy’s writing, where the life of the tenacious Tess unfolds. Yet it is clearly not in the vein of Vaughan Williams’s earlier evocations of a pastoral England. The dark home key of E minor, which, for the composer, evoked the opening of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, speaks of the struggle Hardy’s characters often face, as well as pointing to an ongoing anti-idyllic vein in the composer’s output, witnessed in his Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies.
But as much as listeners may try and pin programmatic elements to the score, Vaughan Williams was keen to steer a wider path, focussing instead on his musical means. The soundworld is, for instance, crucial, with an orchestra including a flugelhorn and a trio of saxophones, the latter chosen not for their jazzy
associations but to strike a baleful note when heard in chorus. Occasionally, the movement’s load is lightened by material in the relative major, with clarinet and, later, violin solos, as a harp glitters in the ether, though the presence of the harmonically distant note of F casts a lingering dissonant shadow.
The second movement is no less dark. Pointing to its episodic nature, Vaughan William confessed that the themes seem ‘to have no logical connection’. His observation led many back to the original programme, with Tess’s arrest at Stonehenge, following the stabbing of her rapist seducer, as well as her subsequent execution described within the Andante, though the flugelhorn’s eerie presence suggests still wider dramas.
As if laughing off the tragedy, the ensuing Scherzo offers a dance worthy of the magical ‘Uranus’ in Vaughan Williams’s friend Holst’s The Planets. The composer himself was also no stranger to that barbaric brand of humour, as heard in his 1936 fairytale opera The Poisoned Kiss and the ‘Vanity Fair’ tableau of The Pilgrim’s Progress of 1951. But however demonic the music proves, with its strident percussion, both tuned and untuned, the prevailingly bitten, austere tone of the Symphony does not relent.
Only, really, in the Finale do we gain a glimpse of the more untrammelled bucolic world associated with Vaughan Williams. Closing his Ninth (and final) Symphony with a slow movement, the composer describes a landscape nonetheless scarred by human horror. Often, the music’s overlapping lines suggest
a threnody, with the returning presence of that nagging F from the first movement. But as the Symphony moves towards its conclusion, with three confirmatory E major chords, the ointment is finally revealed without the fly, as sweeping harp glissandos suggest a hint of the celestial beyond.
Programme note © Gavin Plumley
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis London Philharmonic Orchestra | Roger Norrington (Decca) or London Philharmonic Orchestra | Adrian Boult (Warner)
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending Sarah Chang | London Philharmonic Orchestra Bernard Haitink (Warner) or Tasmin Little | BBC Philharmonic | Andrew Davis (Chandos)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 9 London Philharmonic Orchestra | Bernard Haitink (Warner) or Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra | Andrew Manze (Onyx)
Help us to share the wonder of the LPO by making a donation today. Use the QR code to donate via the LPO website, or visit lpo.org.uk/donate. Thank you.
COMPLETE OPERA IN THREE ACTS
conducted by Edward Gardner with Robert Murray, Rachel Nicholls, Ashley Riches, Jennifer France, Toby Spence, Claire Barnett-Jones, Susan Bickley, Joshua Bloom, London Philharmonic Choir English National Opera Chorus
Recorded live in concert at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, 25 September 2021
Edward Gardner’s show,
he rises to Tippett’s challenge superbly.’
Music
Available to download, stream, or as a 3-CD box set: scan here to find out more.
Vaughan Williams | Tippett | Elgar | Coleridge-Taylor
Saturday 26 November 2022 | 7.30pm
Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music
Tippett A Child of Our Time
Edward Gardner conductor Nadine Benjamin soprano
Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano Kenneth Tarver tenor Roderick Williams baritone London Philharmonic Choir
London Adventist Chorale Soloists of the Royal College of Music
Generously supported by Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet
Saturday 26 November 2022 | 6.00pm
Royal Festival Hall Free and unticketed – all welcome
Arson Fahim Journey to the Sea
Mark-Anthony Turnage Refugee
Amar Muchhala tenor
Members of the LPO Foyle Future Firsts
Students from the Royal Academy of Music
Wednesday 30 November 2022 | 7.30pm
Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs Bruckner Symphony No. 9
Robin Ticciati conductor Simon Keenlyside baritone
Wednesday 25 January 2023 | 7.30pm
Coleridge-Taylor Solemn Prelude (London premiere)
Tippett Piano Concerto Elgar Symphony No. 1
Edward Gardner conductor Steven Osborne piano
place to call home
We are grateful to the following donors for their generous contributions to our Sound Futures campaign. Thanks to their support, we successfully raised £1 million by 30 April 2015 which has now been matched pound for pound by Arts Council England through a Catalyst Endowment grant. This has enabled us to create a £2 million endowment fund supporting special artistic projects, creative programming and education work with key venue partners including our Southbank Centre home. Supporters listed below donated £500 or over. For a full list of those who have given to this campaign please visit lpo.org.uk/soundfutures
Arts Council England Dunard Fund
Victoria Robey OBE Emmanuel & Barrie Roman The Underwood Trust
Welser-Möst Circle
William & Alex de Winton John Ireland Charitable Trust The Tsukanov Family Foundation Neil Westreich
Tennstedt Circle
Valentina & Dmitry Aksenov Richard Buxton
The Candide Trust Michael & Elena Kroupeev Kirby Laing Foundation
Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Alexey & Anastasia Reznikovich Sir Simon Robey Bianca & Stuart Roden Simon & Vero Turner
The late Mr K Twyman
Ageas
John & Manon Antoniazzi Gabor Beyer, through BTO Management Consulting AG Jon Claydon
Mrs Mina Goodman & Miss Suzanne Goodman
Roddy & April Gow
The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust
Mr James R.D. Korner Christoph Ladanyi & Dr Sophia Ladanyi-Czernin Robert Markwick & Kasia Robinski The Maurice Marks Charitable Trust
Mr Paris Natar
The Rothschild Foundation
Tom & Phillis Sharpe
The Viney Family
Mark & Elizabeth Adams
Dr Christopher Aldren Mrs Pauline Baumgartner Lady Jane Berrill
Mr Frederick Brittenden David & Yi Yao Buckley Mr Clive Butler Gill & Garf Collins Mr John H Cook Mr Alistair Corbett Bruno De Kegel Georgy Djaparidze David Ellen
Christopher Fraser OBE David & Victoria Graham Fuller Goldman Sachs International Mr Gavin Graham Moya Greene Mrs Dorothy Hambleton Tony & Susie Hayes Malcolm Herring
Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle Mrs Philip Kan
Rehmet Kassim-Lakha de Morixe Rose & Dudley Leigh Lady Roslyn Marion Lyons Miss Jeanette Martin Duncan Matthews KC Diana & Allan Morgenthau Charitable Trust Dr Karen Morton Mr Roger Phillimore Ruth Rattenbury
The Reed Foundation
The Rind Foundation Sir Bernard Rix David Ross & Line Forestier (Canada)
Carolina & Martin Schwab
Dr Brian Smith Lady Valerie Solti
Mr & Mrs G Stein
Dr Peter Stephenson Miss Anne Stoddart
TFS Loans Limited Marina Vaizey Jenny Watson Guy & Utti Whittaker
Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle Mrs Arlene Beare
Mr Patrick & Mrs Joan Benner Mr Conrad Blakey Dr Anthony Buckland Paul Collins
Alastair Crawford Mr Derek B. Gray Mr Roger Greenwood
The HA.SH Foundation Darren & Jennifer Holmes
Honeymead Arts Trust
Mr Geoffrey Kirkham
Drs Frank & Gek Lim Peter Mace
Mr & Mrs David Malpas
Dr David McGibney
Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner
Mr & Mrs Andrew Neill
Mr Christopher Querée
The Rosalyn & Nicholas Springer Charitable Trust
Timothy Walker CBE AM Christopher Williams Peter Wilson Smith Mr Anthony Yolland
and all other donors who wish to remain anonymous
Anonymous donors
Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet
Aud Jebsen
In memory of Mrs Rita Reay
Sir Simon & Lady Robey OBE
William & Alex de Winton
Mr & Mrs Philip Kan
Neil Westreich
The American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Buxton
Gill & Garf Collins
In memory of Brenda Lyndoe Casbon
In memory of Ann Marguerite Collins
Sally Groves MBE George Ramishvili
Associates
Mrs Irina Andreeva
In memory of Len & Edna Beech Steven M. Berzin
Ms Veronika BorovikKhilchevskaya
The Candide Trust
Irina Gofman & Mr Rodrik V. G. Cave
Patricia Haitink
The Lambert Family Charitable Trust
Countess Dominique Loredan Stuart & Bianca Roden
In memory of Hazel Amy Smith
The Tsukanov Family
The Viney Family
An anonymous donor
Chris Aldren
David & Yi Buckley
In memory of Allner Mavis Channing
Sonja Drexler
Jan & Leni Du Plessis
The Vernon Ellis Foundation
Peter & Fiona Espenhahn Hamish & Sophie Forsyth
Mr Roger Greenwood Malcolm Herring
John & Angela Kessler
Julian & Gill Simmonds Eric Tomsett
Andrew & Rosemary Tusa Guy & Utti Whittaker Mr Florian Wunderlich
Dame Colette Bowe David Burke & Valerie Graham John & Sam Dawson Bruno De Kegel Ulrike & Benno Engelmann Virginia Gabbertas MBE Dmitry & Ekaterina Gursky
The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust Catherine Høgel & Ben Mardle Sir George Iacobescu Jamie & Julia Korner
Mr & Mrs Makharinsky Mr Nikita Mishin Andrew Neill Tom & Phillis Sharpe Mr & Mrs John & Susi Underwood Laurence Watt Grenville & Krysia Williams
Anonymous donors Michael Allen Mr Mark Astaire Nicholas & Christine Beale Mikhail Noskov & Vasilina Bindley Mr Anthony Blaiklock Lorna & Christopher Bown Mr Bernard Bradbury Simon Burke & Rupert King Desmond & Ruth Cecil Mr Evgeny Chichvarkin Mr John H Cook Georgy Djaparidze Deborah Dolce Cameron & Kathryn Doley Mariana Eidelkind & Gene Moldavsky
David Ellen Ben Fairhall
Mr Richard & Helen Gillingwater Mr Daniel Goldstein David & Jane Gosman Mr Gavin Graham Lord & Lady Hall Mrs Dorothy Hambleton Martin & Katherine Hattrell Michael & Christine Henry Mr Steve Holliday J Douglas Home
Mr & Mrs Ralph Kanza
Mrs Elena & Mr Oleg Kolobov Rose & Dudley Leigh
Wg. Cdr. & Mrs M T Liddiard OBE
JP RAF
Drs Frank & Gek Lim
Mr Nicholas Little
Geoff & Meg Mann Mrs Elizabeth Meshkvicheva Andrew T Mills
Peter & Lucy Noble Mr Roger Phillimore Mr Michael Posen
Mr Anthony Salz
Ms Nadia Stasyuk Charlotte Stevenson
Joe Topley
Mr & Mrs John C Tucker Timothy Walker CBE AM Jenny Watson CBE Grenville & Krysia Williams
Anonymous donors
Dr Manon Antoniazzi
Julian & Annette Armstrong Mr John D Barnard
Mr Geoffrey Bateman
Mr Philip Bathard-Smith
Mrs A Beare
Dr Anthony Buckland Dr Simona Cicero & Mr Mario Altieri
Mr Peter Coe
Mrs Pearl Cohen
David & Liz Conway
Mr Alistair Corbett
Ms Mary Anne Cordeiro
Ms Elena Dubinets
Mr Richard Fernyhough Jason George
Mr Christian Grobel
Prof Emeritus John Gruzelier Mark & Sarah Holford Mrs Maureen Hooft-Graafland Per Jonsson
Mr Ian Kapur
Ms Kim J Koch
Ms Elena Lojevsky Mrs Terry Neale John Nickson & Simon Rew Oliver & Josie Ogg Ms Olga Ovenden Mr James Pickford
Filippo Poli
Sir Bernard Rix Mr Robert Ross Priscylla Shaw
Mr & Mrs G Stein
Dr Peter Stephenson
Joanna Williams
Christopher Williams
Ms Elena Ziskind
Anonymous donors
Ralph & Elizabeth Aldwinckle
Mr & Mrs Robert Auerbach
Mrs Julia Beine
Harvey Bengen
Miss YolanDa Brown
Miss Yousun Chae
Mr Julien Chilcott-Monk
Alison Clarke & Leo Pilkington
Mr Joshua Coger
Miss Tessa Cowie
Mr David Devons
Patricia Dreyfus
Mr Martin Fodder
Christopher Fraser OBE
Will Gold Ray Harsant
Mr Peter Imhof
The Jackman Family
Mr David MacFarlane
Dame Jane Newell DBE
Mr Stephen Olton
Mari Payne
Mr David Peters
Ms Edwina Pitman
Mr & Mrs Graham & Jean Pugh
Mr Giles Quarme
Mr Kenneth Shaw
Mr Brian Smith
Ms Rika Suzuki
Tony & Hilary Vines
Dr June Wakefield
Mr John Weekes
Mr C D Yates
Elliott Bernerd
Alfonso Aijón
Kenneth Goode
Carol Colburn Grigor CBE
Pehr G Gyllenhammar
Robert Hill
Mrs Jackie Rosenfeld OBE
Timothy Walker CBE AM Laurence Watt
We are extremely grateful to all donors who have given generously to the LPO over the past year. Your generosity helps maintain the breadth and depth of the LPO’s activities, as well as supporting the Orchestra both on and off the concert platform.
David & Yi Buckley
Gill & Garf Collins
William & Alex de Winton Sonja Drexler
The Friends of the LPO Irina Gofman
Roger Greenwood
Dr Barry Grimaldi
Mr & Mrs Philip Kan John & Angela Kessler
Countess Dominique Loredan Sir Simon Robey
Victoria Robey OBE
Bianca & Stuart Roden Caroline, Jamie & Zander Sharp Julian & Gill Simmonds Eric Tomsett
Neil Westreich Guy & Utti Whittaker
Bloomberg Carter-Ruck
French Chamber of Commerce
Tutti
Lazard Walpole
Sciteb
Gusbourne Estate Jeroboams
Lindt & Sprüngli Ltd OneWelbeck Steinway
Google Inc
ABO Trust BlueSpark Foundation
The Boltini Trust
Borrows Charitable Trust
The Candide Trust Cockayne – Grants for the Arts
The London Community Foundation
The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust Dunard Fund
Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Foyle Foundation Garrick Charitable Trust John Horniman’s Children’s Trust John Thaw Foundation Institute Adam Mickiewicz Kirby Laing Foundation
The Marchus Trust
The Radcliffe Trust Rivers Foundation Rothschild Foundation
RVW Trust Scops Arts Trust Sir William Boremans' Foundation
The John S Cohen Foundation
The Stanley Picker Trust
The Thriplow Charitable Trust
The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust
The Victoria Wood Foundation
The Viney Family
The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust
and all others who wish to remain anonymous.
We are grateful to the Board of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who assist with fundraising for our activities in the United States of America:
Simon Freakley Chairman
Jon Carter
Jay Goffman
Alexandra Jupin
Natalie Pray
Damien Vanderwilt
Elizabeth Winter
Catherine Høgel Hon. Director
Jenifer L. Keiser, CPA, EisnerAmper LLP
Natasha Tsukanova Co-Chair Martin Höhmann Co-Chair
Mrs Irina Andreeva
Steven M. Berzin
Veronika Borovik-Khilchevskaya Marie-Laure Favre Gilly de Varennes de Bueil
Aline Foriel-Destezet
Irina Gofman
Countess Dominique Loredan
Olivia Ma
George Ramishvili
Jay Stein
Dr Catherine C. Høgel Chair
Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE Vice-Chair
Martin Höhmann* President Mark Vines* Vice-President Kate Birchall*
David Buckley
David Burke
Bruno De Kegel
Deborah Dolce Elena Dubinets
Tanya Joseph Hugh Kluger*
Katherine Leek*
Al MacCuish Minn Majoe*
Tania Mazzetti*
Jamie Njoku-Goodwin
Andrew Tusa
Neil Westreich Simon Freakley (Ex officio –Chairman of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra)
*Player-Director
Martin Höhmann Chairman Christopher Aldren Dr Manon Antoniazzi
Roger Barron
Richard Brass
Helen Brocklebank YolanDa Brown
Simon Burke
Simon Callow CBE
Desmond Cecil CMG Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG Andrew Davenport Guillaume Descottes
Cameron Doley
Christopher Fraser OBE
Jonathan Harris CBE FRICS Marianna Hay MBE Nicholas Hely-Hutchinson DL Amanda Hill
Rehmet Kassim-Lakha Jamie Korner
Geoff Mann
Clive Marks OBE FCA Stewart McIlwham Andrew Neill
Nadya Powell
Sir Bernard Rix
Victoria Robey OBE Baroness Shackleton
Thomas Sharpe KC
Julian Simmonds
Barry Smith Martin Southgate
Chris Viney
Laurence Watt Elizabeth Winter
Elena Dubinets
Artistic Director
David Burke Chief Executive
Chantelle Vircavs PA to the Executive
Concert Management
Roanna Gibson Concerts and Planning Director
Graham Wood Concerts and Recordings Manager
Fabio Sarlo Glyndebourne and Projects Manager Maddy Clarke Tours Manager
Alison Jones Concerts and Recordings Co-ordinator Robert Winup Concerts and Tours Assistant Matthew Freeman Recordings Consultant Andrew Chenery Orchestra Personnel Manager
Sarah Thomas Martin Sargeson Librarians
Laura Kitson Stage and Operations Manager
Stephen O’Flaherty Deputy Operations Manager
Freddie Jackson Deputy Stage Manager Felix Lo Orchestra and Auditions Manager
Frances Slack
Finance Director
Dayse Guilherme Finance Manager
Jean-Paul Ramotar Finance and IT Officer
Education and Community Talia Lash Education and Community Director
Hannah Foakes Lowri Davies Education and Community Project Managers Development Laura Willis Development Director Rosie Morden Individual Giving Manager Siân Jenkins Corporate Relations Manager Anna Quillin Trusts and Foundations Manager
Katurah Morrish Development Events Manager Eleanor Conroy Al Levin
Development Assistants
Nick Jackman Campaigns and Projects Director
Kirstin Peltonen Development Associate Marketing
Kath Trout Marketing and Communications Director Mairi Warren Marketing Manager Rachel Williams Publications Manager Harrie Mayhew Website Manager Gavin Miller
Sales and Ticketing Manager
Ruth Haines Press and PR Manager
Sophie Harvey Digital and Residencies Marketing Manager
Greg Felton
Digital Creative Alicia Hartley Marketing Assistant Archives
Philip Stuart Discographer Gillian Pole Recordings Archive
Professional Services
Charles Russell Speechlys Solicitors
Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP Auditors
Dr Barry Grimaldi
Honorary Doctor
Mr Chris Aldren Honorary ENT Surgeon
Mr Simon Owen-Johnstone Hon. Orthopaedic Surgeon
London Philharmonic Orchestra 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP
Tel: 020 7840 4200
Box Office: 020 7840 4242 Email: admin@lpo.org.uk lpo.org.uk
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